1. INTRODUCTION

Most human societies, in the course of millennia of social and cultural evolution, had evolved a variety of regulatory measures to ensure sustainable utilization of natural resources. These measures included family-wise restricted quota of forest biomass, removal of only dead and fallen plants, sharing of natural resources, prohibition on sale of forest biomass to outsiders (all of which are to this day followed in the Halkar village in the outskirts of Kumta town in Uttara Kannada district). The fishing families in the estuarine villages in the Kumta taluk of Aghanashini River had shared among them traditional fishing privileges in the individual ‘kodis’ or estuarine channels. Traditional hunting was a taboo until Deepavali festival in the forested villages of Uttara Kannada. To quote Madhav Gadgil (1992):

For local people, degradation of natural resources is a genuine hardship, and of all the people and groups who compose the Indian society they are the most likely to be motivated to take good care of the landscape and ecosystems on which they depend. The many traditions of nature conservation that are still practiced could form a basis for a viable strategy of biodiversity conservation.

Protection of forest patches as sacred has been reported from many parts of India and many other countries in the recent decades. Trees were normally not to be cut in such forests as they were dedicated to gods. Such sacred groves still persist in many parts of Asia and Africa (Gadgil and Vartak, 1976; Frazer, 1935; Gadgil, 1987).

Most of Himalayas, the rain forest clad North East India, the Central Indian hills, parts of Rajaputana region, many parts of Deccan and the Western Ghat-west coast regions of India had witnessed through ages the strong tradition of conservation of patches of forests as sacred, especially by village and forest dwelling communities. During the period of British colonialism the government asserted its ownership over common lands, including sacred forests, which the local communities had safeguarded and managed through generations. Sweeping cultural changes concomitant with industrial and agricultural advancements also changed traditional belief systems in which nature had a central role. Worship of gods associated with natural sacred sites and ‘panchabhutas’ or the five elements, has in a major scale given way to installing deities in man-made structures, causing neglect and even exploitation of the precious heritage of natural sacred sites. Nevertheless, Malhotra et al. (2001) have made an excellent compilation from the states like Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jarkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,  Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Orissa, western Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttaranchal etc., which have more forest wealth than other states, strong evidences of nature conservation tradition, in the form of  sacred groves. These sacred forests are known by various names in peninsular India: such as devarakadu, devarubana or kan in Karnataka, kavu in Kerala, kovilkadu in Tamil Nadu and devrai in Maharashtra.

D. Brandis (1897), the first Inspector General of Forests in India, was one of the first persons to make commendation on the system of sacred groves in the country:

Very little has been published regarding sacred groves in India, but they are, or rather were, very numerous. I have found them nearly in all provinces. As instances I may mention the Garo and Khasi hills which I visited in 1879, the Devarakadus or sacred groves of Coorg….and the hill ranges of the Salem district in the Madras Presidency….These are situated in the moister parts of the country. In the dry region sacred groves are particularly numerous in Rajputana. In Mewar, they usually consist of Anogeissus latifolia, a moderate sized tree with small leaves, which fall early in the dry season….Before falling the foliage of these trees turns a beautiful yellowish red, and at that season these woods resemble our beech forests in the autumn. In the southernmost States of Rajaputana, in Partabgarh and Banswara, in a somewhat moister climate, the sacred groves, here called Malwan, consists of a variety of trees….These sacred forests, as a rule, are never touched by the axe, except when wood is wanted for the repair of religious buildings

Brandis also referred to a “ remarkable little forest of Sal (Shorea robusta)” near Gorakhpur being maintained by a Muslim saint, Mian Sahib. The forest was in good condition and well protected. Nothing was allowed to be cut except wood to feed the sacred fire and “this required the cutting annually of a small number of trees which were carefully selected among those that showed signs of age and decay.”

2. KANS AS SACRED GROVES

Francis Buchanan (1870): Alluding obviously to the system of sacredness of forests in the Western Ghats-west coast of Uttara Kannada, Dr. Francis Buchanan, officer of the British East India Company, who travelled through Uttara Kannada in 1801, soon after capturing  Canara region by the British stated:

The forests are the property of the gods of the village in which they are situated, and the trees ought not to be cut without having leave from the Gauda (headman of the village)…. who here also is pujari (priest) to the temple of the village god. The idol receives nothing for granting this permission; but the neglect of the ceremony of asking his leave brings his vengeance on the guilty person.

Buchanan (1870 continued further: “Each village has a different god, some male, some female, but by the Brahmins they are called Saktis, as requiring bloody sacrifices to their appease their wrath”

From these statements may be inferred that the forests were virtually under the control of the village communities with well defined territories and many had sacred values attributed to them. Buchanan’s references to the then practice of slashing and burning of forests in the hills for shifting cultivation, indicates the fact that all forests were not sacred, and the sacred forests also bore the name kan or kanu.

W.A. Talbot (1909):  In his monumental floristic work Forest Flora of the Bombay Presidency and Sind Talbot referred to the sacredness of kans, a rare such remark from a British officer:

In North Kanara and even as far east as the Hangal subdivision of the Dharwar district along the Western Ghats under an annual rainfall of not less than 70”, isolated irregularly distributed patches of rain-forest, locally called Kans and Rais are found surrounded by cultivation or monsoon-forest. These are often the mere remnant of larger areas and have in many instances been respected by the natives as the abode of a sylvan deity.

Talbot’s statement makes it clear that even towards the drier east of Uttara Kannada district bordering the Hangal taluk, with rainfall much lower, compared to the mountainous malnadu part of Western Ghats, there existed evergreen forests equivalent to rain forests, the kans, which were home to village deities. These kans were already on the decline as they were mere “remnant of larger areas.”

The special protection given to the kans by the village communities of Sorab in Shimoga district had won full praise from Peter Ashton (1988), renown tropical forest ecologist, who considered kans as:

Prototypes of a technique currently being promoted as a new approach to forestry: agroforestry. In a region dominated by deciduous forests (Sorab is bordering on the drier Deccan Plateau) that were annually burned, the kans stood out as belts, often miles long, of evergreen forest along the moist scrap of the Western Ghat hills. Assiduously protected by the villagers, these once natural forests had been enriched by the inhabitants through interplanting of jackfruits, sago and sugar palms, pepper vine, and even coffee, an exotic.

Ashton (1988) justifies such kind of conservation in India seeking an explanation in its culture:

The Indian sub-continent is without doubt the world centre of human cultural diversity… The Hindus have inherited perceptions of a people who have lived since ancient times in a humid climate particularly favourable for forest life. Settled people, they see themselves as one with the natural world, as both custodians and dependents…. Forests of the mountains and watersheds have been traditionally been sacred; springs and the natural landscape in their vicinity have attracted special veneration. The Hindus learned from their predecessors millennia ago, a mythology, sociology and technology of irrigation that has enabled the most intensive yet sustainable agriculture humanity has so far devised.

In the above remarks, Ashton was referring to culture based conservation in India, and how the veneration of watershed forests in the highlands facilitated “most intensive yet sustainable agriculture humanity has so far devised.”

Area under the kans

It is difficult to get a consolidated account of the area under the kans, at the time of the establishment of British authority over the forest resources of the malnadu regions of Karnataka. It appears that survey and demarcation of the kans was an incomplete work. Several kans of Uttara Kannada district got merged with rest of the state reserved forests and lost their special identities. They are to be recognized today by their names, such as Kathalekan, Karikan, Hulidevarukan etc. and also by the relics of primeval vegetation that still might be persisting in them to some degrees. According to the earliest ever survey on the kans conducted by Brandis and Grant (1868), Sorab taluk of Shimoga district had 171 kans covering a total of 32,594 acres (about 13,000 ha). Halesorabkan, the largest of them covered an area of about 400 ha. The kans  were different  from the secondary forests of deciduous kinds. Such systematic documentation of kans was not conducted elsewhere. Cowlidurg (present Thirthahalli taluk) was leading in the number of kans (436); Kadur district (present Chikmagalur) had 128 kans (Brandis and Grant, 1868).

The Gazetteer of Mysore: Shimoga District (1920) merely refers to the kans as evergreen forests of not much value, at a time when the hardwood timber yielding deciduous forests were paid much more attention. The Gazetteer states on the kans of Sagar taluk:

Excepting the great Hinni forest, which lies to the south of the Gersoppa Falls, the remainder are chiefly kans, or tracts of virgin evergreen forest, in most of which pepper grows abundantly self-sown and uncared for, but little of the produce being collected owing to the depredations of the monkeys.

The Gazetteer considers the kans towards the summits of ghats as not of much use owing to inaccessibility. It admits to the decline of kans; yet had much in praise for the kans of Sorab:

The taluk of Sorab abounds with kans, many of which are cultivated with pepper vines and sometimes coffee. The sago palm(Caryota urens) is also much grown for the sake of its toddy. These kans are apparently the remains of the old forests, which appear once to have stretched as far east as Anavatti. At the present day at Anavatti itself there  is no wood, and the surrounding country is clothed with either scrub jungle or small deciduous forest….Kans are found also in Sagar, Nagar and other Malnad taluks, but those in Sorab are, from their number, situation and accessibility the most valuable.

3. ROLE OF KAN FORESTS IN PRE-COLONIAL LAND USE SYSTEM

1. Kans as sacred groves: While they acted as decentralized, community-based system of biodiversity conservation, these specially preserved forest patches played major roles as important centres of local religion and culture. They, with or without any man-built structures, functioned as abodes of village deities. Today most kans are under state ownership; nevertheless their roles continue as centres of worship, as far as the local communities are concerned. When we surveyed the kans of 10 villages of Sirsi taluk, which were included in a forest working plan for firewood supply to Sirsi town (Thippeswami, 1963), all of them were associated with sacred spots with deities, where people gathered and worshipped, despite state ownership over the forests. Such is the case with most other kans elsewhere too, in which matter, they are comparable to the devarakadus of Coorg. Whereas the latter got recognition from the State as sacred forests, and community rights were honoured, the same did not happen in Uttara Kannada and Shimoga districts. Whereas ownership on the former were claimed by the forest department of the Government of Bombay, the kans of Shimoga, in the erstwhile kingdom of Mysore district, came under the jurisdiction of either the forest or revenue departments,  under the overlordship of the British, after the defeat of Tippu Sultan in 1799.

Timber felling was a taboo in the kans ensuring their preservation through ages as in the  devarakadus of Coorg, devrais of Maharashtra and kavus of Kerala. The deities of most kans belong to the folk tradition of India and not to the Vedic tradition. To name a few from Karnataka malnadu are Choudamma, Rachamma, Jataka, Birappa, Bhutappa, Hulidevaru (tiger deity) etc. Occasionally are smaller groves called naagarabanas dedicated to the serpents.

2. Kans as safety forests: The kan forests, well preserved in pre-colonial landuse system, in many ways ensured safety and integrity of the rural landscapes of Western Ghats. From a landscape ecological point of view these in tact forest patches formed a mosaic with other elements such as secondary forests, scrub, shifting cultivation fallows, grasslands, farms and water bodies to enhance landscape heterogeneity holding highest amount of species diversity. As safety forests they performed the following functions as well:
1. Watershed protection: The kans are often found to be associated with water sources like springs or ponds. The Government of Bombay (1923) highlighted the watershed value of the kans of Uttara Kannada:

Throughout the area, both in Sirsi and Siddapur, there are few tanks and few deep wells and the people depend much on springs …. If a heavy evergreen forest is felled in the dry season the flow of water from any spring it feeds increases rapidly though no rainwater may have fallen for some months.

2. Keeping favourable microclimate: Wingate (1888), the forest settlement officer for Uttara Kannada noted that the kans were of great economic and climatic importance as they favoured the existence of springs, and perennial streams, and generally indicated the proximity of valuable spice gardens, which derived from them both shade and moisture- a scenario, that holds good to this day if the kan is good state.

3. Kans for fire protection: Brandis and Grant (1868), in their report on the kans of Sorab observed that during dry months jungle fires swept through every part of the dry forest which was composed of deciduous trees and bamboo. But, “No fires enter the evergreen forest, leaves, branches and fallen trees accumulate and gradually decay, forming ultimately a rich surface layer of vegetable mould.” Not aware of the village communities’ stakes in preservation of these kan safety forests, Brandis and Grant wondered: “why a certain locality should be covered with evergreen, and another in its immediate vicinity with dry forest.” The degradation of evergreen kans in Shimoga district has increased from the rising threats from forest fires in the recent years.

4. Protection from soil erosion: Rain forests are considered fragile places, their collapse in highlands and slopes often associated with soil erosion, compaction and rockiness. The kans -understood as heavy evergreen forests, the ground covered with “a rich surface layer of vegetable mould” (Brandis and Grant, 1868) with very sharply defined limits, alternating with bare grounds covered with laterite was a common spectacle of malnadu area. “The real cause of this alternation of bare ground and densely wooded patches is to be found in the laterite formation. Wherever the hard bed of laterite is near the surface, wood refuses to grow” (Gazetteer of Mysore-Shimoga, 1920). Further “In the kans the soil is rich and deep, but in most of the taluks (of Shimoga) the soil is hard and shallow, with much laterite” (-ibid-).

5. Kans for subsistence: Despite grain crops and gardens, the malnadu people lived at subsistence level, with much dependence on forests. Dependence on kans was mainly for wild pepper, cinnamon (both were traded commodities), edible fruits and seeds, medicinal plants, toddy and palm sugar from Caryota palm (bainy) etc. Combined with a regulated form of hunting the common people, by and large, lived in harmony with the rain forests. The landscape heterogeneity of grasslands and forests (including the well preserved kans) would have favoured rich wildlife and many people hunted for subsistence. The kans would act as buffers especially during times of drought and famines by providing not only water but also various kinds of food from the wild.

6. Biodiversity conservation: Kans ranging in size from part of an hectare to few hundred hectares each and protected from time immemorial, may be considered as the best samples of climax forests of the region. These sacred groves often served as good refuges for arboreal birds and mammals, especially primates, and many other denizens of deep forests. Thus Kathalekan in Siddapur taluk of Uttara Kannada is home to the rare rain forest habitat  called Myristica swamps with their threatened flora that include Myristica magnifica, Gymnacranthera canarica, Dipterocarpus indicus, Semecarpus kathalekanensis, Syzygium travancoricum etc. Karikan in the Honavar taluk of Uttara Kannada has a rare and magnificent stand of the climax forest tree D. indicus. S. travancoricum survives today in Mathigar kanand in Aralihonda of Siddapur, which are sacred groves, small fragments of around one hectare each, in the midst of otherwise an agricultural landscape.  When a 2.5 sq. km area of Kathalekan was surveyed about 35 species of frogs and their relatives were discovered there, a number that is equal to almost the entire amphibian population of Maharashtra State. Katalkean and its immediate vicinity harbor the northernmost population of the Endangered primate Lion-tailed macaque.

7. Care of pepper vines in the kans:  Black pepper (Piper nigrum) was an important item of trade through the west coast port for over 2000 years (Saletore, 1973). Pepper grows wild in the wet evergreen forests of Western Ghats and is also cultivated in the gardens. A 16th century queen of Gersoppa was popularly known as ‘Pepper Queen” to the Portuguese (Campbell, 1883). From Buchanan’s writings it becomes clear that in at least in some of the kans of coastal Uttara Kannada the villagers used to take care of the wild pepper. Buchanan understood these as ‘myanasu canu’ meaning ‘menasu kanu’ or kans with black pepper. Wild pepper required human attention for better yield.   Such kans with lofty evergreen trees were seen in the otherwise much denuded coastal hills. The practice of tending to wild pepper in the kans may be older to pepper cultivation in the arecanut  gardens (Chandran and Gadgil, 1993). The amount of pepper produced from kans, at one time was said to be “very great”.

3. Land tenure: The village communities of Karnataka malndu enjoyed various kinds of forest privileges in the pre-colonial times. They had as such no rights to claim forest lands as their own. The kans were entered in the revenue records as assessed lands held in regular tenure by wargdars or landholders in the vicinity. These wargdars paid certain taxes or warg to the state for use of the kans (for mainly collection of non-wood produce). Some of the kans of Sorab were ‘unoccupied’ and yielded no revenue at the time of the survey by Brandis and Grant (1868). They were deserted because of higher taxation by the state, thereby implying that the ownership of kans was vested with the state despite the people enjoying traditional privileges. Usually the kans had distinct boundaries marked by old trenches or footpaths. Each holder or wargdar had a portion demarcated by some lines or footpaths or other identification marks.  Captain Someren (1871) found several unoccupied kans in the Belandur area of Shimoga.

4. DECLINE OF THE KANS

State domination over the forests, beginning in the British period in early 19th century, resulted in the villagers losing their hold over forests, including the kans. Following the Indian Forest Act of 1878 the kans of Uttara Kannada were mostly brought under the state reserved forests. People’s rights in the kans of Uttara Kannada were curtailed to certain minor concessions like collection of dry fuelwood as in eastern parts of Sirsi and Siddapur (Government of Bombay, 1923). The kans of Shimoga district in the Mysore kingdom came under the jurisdiction of the forest department or revenue department.

1. Introduction of contract system: Contract system was introduced in the kans of Uttara Kannada for collection of non-timber forest produce. The contractors used to extract products like pepper and cinnamon in a destructive fashion, cutting down the pepper vines to collect their produce and hacking down the cinnamon trees for the bark, as for example in Kallabbe kan of Kumta (Wingate, 1888).

2. Kans for meeting timber and fuel needs: Tree cutting in the kans, as in any other sacred forests, was considered a taboo. In Uttara Kannada, following forest reservation, communities lost their traditional hold over forests. Though degraded forests around densely populated villages and towns were set aside as ‘minor forests’ for extraction of especially fuel and leaf manure, as the earlier community centred management system had collapsed, there was rising pressure on these minor forests, leading to their rapid degradation. Yielding to such demand from local people for forest biomass, in eastern Sirsi and Siddapur, villagers were allowed to gather firewood from the kans, which hitherto, the local communities had preserved as sacred places. Collins (1922) reported that in eastern Sirsi and Siddapur the kans were getting infested with the shrubby weed Lantana because of forest degradation. Similar was the situation regarding the kans of Shimoga. Resource shortage faced by the common people after reservations, especially of the timber rich forests, prompted people to fell trees in the kans of Shimoga. According to M.S.N. Rao, a forest officer (1919) fellings in the kans of Shimoga had disastrous effects, including the disappearance of the water supply. Today we can see scores of canopy gaps in these kans, periodical fires burning annually drier patches of woods, inviting once again more deciduous vegetation and bamboo which have become potential fire hazards in otherwise evergreen forests. As the kans were getting exposed to more intense sunlight through wider canopy gaps many have turned too dry for pepper-vines, which was once a major product from the kans, and a priced commodity for international trade from the dawn of history.

3. Logging in the kans: During 1940’s Dipterocarpus indicus from Kathalekan in Uttara Kannada was supplied to the railways and a plywood company. A forest working plan of 1966 for Sirsi and Siddapur taluks included 4,000 ha of kans for felling of industrial timbers (Shanmukhappa, 1966). Another working plan for Sirsi included 670 ha of kans for selection of firewood species for Sirsi town supply (Thippeswami, 1963). Menasikan of Siddapur was clear-felled and converted into forest monoculture plantation (Chandran and Gadgil, 1993).

4. Pressure from developmental processes: Towns and villages are expanding into even the kan areas. For eg. In the neighborhood of Sorab a major road is passing through Gundsettykoppakan. The Sorab town itself has expanded into Hiresekunikan of 20 ha.

5. Kans turn into coffee estates: Coffee introduced into the kans of Chikmagalur district apparently made at least some of the local Wargadars into estate owners. Because of the Revenue Department ownership of many of the kans in Shimoga district, lands within these kans were indiscriminately allotted for coffee cultivation, ignoring their ecological significance, sacredness, and village community based management systems. The Forest Department of Shimoga is making fervent efforts to salvage 90 acres of kan granted to five persons from Survey no. 27 and 52 acres of kan land from Survey no. 29 (both from Kullunde kan of Tirthahalli taluk) granted to three persons for coffee cultivation. Such things have taken place throughout the kans of Shimoga district.

6. Encroachment of kans: Kan encroachment in large-scale, especially for cultivation, is widespread throughout Shimoga district. In Uttara Kannada district even Myristica swamps associated with some of the kans were not spared by encroachers.

7. Contract system in the kans: The state takeover of kans was followed by the introduction of contract system for collection of non-wood produce. The impact in Uttara Kannada, on account of this may be described in the words of Wingate (1888), the forest settlement officer:

I am still of the opinion that the system of annually selling by auction the produce of the kans is a pernicious one. The contractor sends forth his subordinates and coolies, who hack about the kans just as they please, the pepper vines are cut down from the  root, dragged from the trees and the fruits then gathered, while the cinnamon trees are all but destroyed…. I was greatly struck  with the general destruction of the Kumta evergreens, they were in a far finer state of preservation 15 years ago.

Kan allotment for leaf manure and conversion into minor forests

Collins (1922) pointed out that as a variation from its policy of strict protection of kans the Government of Bombay allotted them in any villages of Sirsi and Siddapur taluks to arecanut farmers as betta or leaf manure forests. In eastern Sirsi 769 hectares of kans were added to the minor forests open for exploitation. In Shimoga district several privileges were conceded to the local peoples inside the kans, also leading to their degradation. In Sorab and rest of Shimoga as the timber rich deciduous forests were taken over by the Government as state reserved forests the people were given certain concessions, including fuelwood harvests from kans, which they had conserved through ages as sacred forests. In Uttara Kannada kans (after British domination of the district from 1799, over a period of next 50 years or so, the British consolidated their hold over the forests) contract system was introduced for collection of non-timber forest produce from the kans. This system obviously replaced the system of people’s management that prevailed earlier. The contractor, being interested more in making short term profits, often resorted to destructive harvest of non-timber forest produce from the kans. In the words of Wingate (1888), the forest settlement officer:

I am still of the opinion that the system of annually selling by auction the produce of the kans is a pernicious one. The contractor sends forth his subordinates and coolies, who hack about the kans just as they please,the pepper vines are cut down from the root, dragged from the trees and the fruits then gathered, while the cinnamon trees are all but destroyed…. I was greatly struck with the general destruction among the Kumta evergreens, they were in far finer state of preservation 15 years ago.